TELUS Motorola MILESTONE Review

It’s been out in Canada for a little under three weeks now, but the Motorola MILESTONE has already proven itself to be quite the popular handset thanks in part to all of the Canadians watching American TV and witnessing Verizon’s huge media blitz for the DROID. For a device that has been on sale in one form or another for many months, we have to wonder — is the MILESTONE still worth it? Put on your reading glasses, sit back and relax, and join us after the jump for our hands on the the TELUS Motorola MILESONE to find out.OS

Seeing as this is a hardware review we decided we’d bypass once again dissecting Android because everything that needs to be said about the Android OS has already been said by BG in his epic Android tirade post. If you’re seething at rage just thinking of what it is he said or simply as the prospect of reading well over 1,400 words then let us quickly catch you up to speed: Android, while a damn fine OS that has all the promise in the world, has “practically no human emotion with Google when it comes to technology. Everything is statistical and analytical.” On we go.

Tech Specs

When its EV-DO counterpart came out late last year, it was easily the most advanced Android handset to come to market. Quite a lot of things have changed since that time — what with the release of the Nexus One and the announcing of the Desire — but as it stands, the MILESTONE is still no slouch. Here are some key specs to keep in mind before you go on:

Android 2.0.1

550MHz OMAP3 processor

256MB RAM / 512MB ROM

3.7″ WVGA capacitive touchscreen display

5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash

aGPS with MotoNav pre-loaded

Wi-Fi 802.11b/g

10.2Mbps UMTS/HSDPA

6.5 hours talk time / 380 hours standby (3G)

60mm x 115.8mm x 13.7 mm, 165g

Build Quality

As far as build quality goes, it’s pretty hard to fault the MILESTONE. On the top half of the device we have the display, encased by a metal bezel, and made up of a sturdy slab of plastic that does a more than admirable job of resisting scuffs and scratches. Underneath this is a fairly unique sliding mechanism that relies not on an easily breakable spring but a simple and unseen rail system. When pushed open or closed, it locks itself into place with a delightfully reassuring “click”.
On the lower half of device is where we see the plastic components come out of hiding. But fear not because they’re amongst the best we’ve ever encountered. The bezel immediately surrounding the keypad and d-pad is matte black while the entire backing of the device is made up of rubberized plastic save for the rectangular piece directly below the camera module that bears the “with Google” mark. Your average hardware-related creaks and groans and nowhere to be found on this device.
The only real concern we have with the hardware is the volume rocker/camera zoom because it’s looser than… well, we’ll let you fill in the blank. All of this high quality fit and finish means that the MILESTONE weighs in at an incredibly hefty 165g but oddly enough it feels great in the hand and surprisingly light in pockets. Bonus: This weight equals crime deterrent.

Display

It’s not an AMOLED nor is it even Super AMOLED, but for the life of us, we haven’t come across many screens that have wowed us like the 3.7″ WVGA display on the MILESTONE. Popping to life with rich color, easily viewable from all angles and bright enough to overcome direct sunlight, this display is also very accurate making things like web-browsing and typing on the virtual keypad all the easier. How would we rank it overall? Second only to the iPhone, but just by a few hairs because of the slightly better capacitive factor.

Keyboard

We know it looks like it might be nightmare to type on what with its lack of very flat surface, lack of major definition and overall footprint, but the QWERTY keyboard on the MILESTONE is actually quite nice. Okay, it doesn’t even come close to anything RIM makes and could definitely have used a bit more refining before the design was finalized (who in God’s name thought the tiny spacebar, two blank keys and non-sensical punctuation layout was a good idea?), but after a few days we think most people will be rather happy with it. And let’s be honest: with the stock Android virtual keypad being as bad as it is (who actually likes it?) you’re really going to want to use the real deal as much as possible. Or get Swype.

Camera

The MILESTONE’s 5 megapixel auto-focus camera is barely passable as a camera on a modern smartphone. It boots up in an acceptable amount of time, but the saving of images consistently took 4 plus seconds. The worst part is that after going through the whole boot up, focus, snap the pic and save it routine, any special moment you had hoped to capture forever will invariably come out looking like they were taken on a VGA webcam in a dimly lit room way back in the early 2000’s. Just in case you were wondering, the dual-LED flash seems to be as effective as the goggles Radioactive Man once infamously wore. Yeah.

Multimedia

Simply put, Android needs some work when it comes to multimedia. It can do everything you want reasonably well, but the interface feels rushed and incomplete and, what’s more, is quite clunky and cumbersome. We did find ourself enjoying videos if only for the screen, but things like the music player might prove to be a cause for concern for those hat refuse to carry a phone and a dedicated MP3 player. Nonetheless, it still manages to do an admirable job given what we honestly feel is a lack of effort on Google’s part.

Browser

Thanks to the MILESTONE’s snappy processor, awesome display and a little thing called multi-touch, the web experience on the MILESTONE is fantastic. We hate to do it, but for the sake of a benchmark that everyone can understand, we pitted the device against an iPhone 3GS (you knew this was coming, didn’t you?), the de facto standard for mobile web browsing. Speed wise both devices loaded up content-heavy sites within +/- 2 seconds of one another over 3G and 1 second over Wi-Fi. What sets them apart, however, is rendering. We really appreciated how big everything seemed on the MILESTONE and how easy it was to read even the tiniest text, but overall the iPhone 3GS did a much better job of accurately and properly rendering websites as they’d appear on a desktop. But again, it’s a very close call.

Email Support

Being a product of Google, Android naturally has great Gmail support built into it and supports all of the goodies you’d expect like labels (sadly you cannot create, edit, or remove them), stars and search so we’ll leave it at that. The thing we really want to talk about is Exchange. Yes, the MILESTONE supports it, but we use the word support loosely. We hooked up one of our Exchange accounts to the MILESTONE and, truth be told, we wouldn’t count on Android for our BGR email if you paid us. Here’s a few reasons why: On several occasions the notification panel let us know we have a new Exchange email only for us to find it actually hadn’t been downloaded by the Email. This either led to us having to wait 5 seconds (!) while a sweet and simple text email was downloaded or manually hit Menu > Refresh. No doubt this is a bug and will likely be addressed in a future update, but the reality is we have no idea when an update is coming and have no guarantees it will completely fix the issue. Another fatal flaw with Exchange is folders because you can’t actually place an email into a folder of your choosing. To make matters worse, you can’t look at emails that are already in folders that are older than the maximum length you set up for synchronization (it caps out at one month). Add to this the fact you cannot even do something as basic as search for messages and the picture is quite clear: business users stay the hell away, get on board with Google Apps, or use one of the hideous looking but very function third party clients like Touchdown.

Telephony

We don’t often use our cell phones for actually calling people any more thanks to things like email, IM, BBM and SMS, but when we do we demand excellence, and thankfully the MILESTONE delivers. Calls came in loud and clear on both ends, and a few of the people we spoke to made a point of mentioning the lack of background noise.

The Network

Reality check: TELUS’s HSPA+ network is brand new and most of its customers are still milling about in the land of EV-DO. Because of this we think it would be unfair and inappropriate for us to compare its network (or Bell’s, for that matter) to Rogers’s which has been at the GSM/HSPA game for years. Having said that, commenting on it in and of itself is fair game. So how then would we summarize the network? Mind-numbingly fast. In fact, we ran speed tests on a daily basis and not once did we see speeds drop below 4Mbps.

Two Huge Issues

So far most of what we have said about the MILESTONE is positive, so naturally it’s time for two huge drawbacks.
The first is that paid apps from the Android Marketplace are unavailable in Canada. So unless you want to be greasy and get into pirating apps, you’re just going to have to make do without. Hope might be on the horizon considering it was just this week a spokesperson for Google mentioned the possibility of an announcement related to paid apps in Canada as early as next week, but this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve heard such a thing.

The second major drawback won’t hit everyone like the lack of paid apps, but it will sting the keeners. As you no doubt know, one of the greatest things about Android devices past is the ease in which users can root, hack, and load custom ROMs. Unfortunately when it comes to this particular device, Motorola has made what we consider to be a very weak move in locking up the bootloader. It doesn’t mean hacking is forever out of the question, it just means it’s going to be tough and take some time (odds are someone ends up gaining root access not too long after the first software update is issued). Nonetheless, we can’t help but think such a move violates the spirit of Android and is just plain odd considering the DROID does not have this restriction. “Smartphone Without Limits”? our asses.

Overall

There’s no denying that we’ve had some pretty uncomplimentary things to say about the MILESTONE, but it must not be forgotten that we’ve also given it a lot of praise. As we sit back and try and think of how to sum up our thoughts into a few sentences, we can’t help but come to the inevitable conclusion that, despite our perceived flaws, we think the average consumer who is out for a smartphone will really enjoy the MILESTONE provided they’re okay with dedicating some time to what is for some a bit of a difficult learning curve. As for the nerds, it’s really hard to say. If you’re not totally put off by the lack of paid apps and the fact that rooting is presently an issue then we say give the MILESTONE a shot. After all, we like it.

If I knew How to remove all the signs of telus. I would buy this phone for It&t

bob

What cant you remove? their are no telus branding on the device itself? please explain

Tim

I was unaware,, thanks bob. appreciate the info.

MRCUR

Yeah, what are you talking about? The only “branding” I’ve seen is on the home screen where it says “Telus” because of the network (which would show AT&T, Bell, etc.).

Winston

No signs of Telus, not even a label on the back.

Tim

My comment wasnt directed at Telus. I dont know anything about them. I just wondered if it could be unbranded period. Now I know and Thank you.

CJ

Does the media player play music & video? Yes! Then it does what it’s supposed to do. This over fascination people seem to be developing with adding useless visuals to things is gone beyond idiotic to boring. At the end of the day all I want from my media player is for it to play media!

KBlack

Hum yeah, I didn’t use the iphone much for music, but I use it constantly on my milestone and it’s really not as bad as people pretend. You got a touchscreen to see and choose artists/albums from, play/pause/next/previous buttons and playlist controls. What else do you really need?

Prolab

A good thing i read this review.

I was on the fence to get one until i saw that Android paid marketplace isnt available in Canada. So that means free ones are available?

Or the marketplace isnt available to Canucks at all?

http://www.aramation.com Aram

yes, Marketplace is available. it only has free apps

sam

@Tim,

From what I heard, this phone has no physical telus logos on it. It only shows the telus network when connected to it.

Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

QuickWeevil

From what I can tell on the pics there aren’t any. On my Droid the only VZW logo is on the chin which that spot is empty on the pics above.

Tim

Thanks@sam&quick

gomer

Free apps are available to Canada, just not paid apps. Paid apps may be coming very soon.

StevenGlansburg

You mean to tell me that Android is an OS? And it is not called Droid? And that I can buy other phones with the Android OS not called the DROID on carriers other than Verizon?

No fucking way.

I don’t believe it. I’ve got to hand it to Verizon’s marketing department for advertising/misinforming the most of the time brain dead public.

Verizon changed the name of the Milestone to Droid because while the two phones are similar, they have small yet significant differences. The Droid has many different ROMS and hacks available for it (as stated in the review) while the Milestone does not. As a Droid owner, I find the ROMS great since they offer overclocking as a feature. Verizon does misinform in the commercials at times but I find AT&T to actually misinform the public to an even greater extent. Constantly, I see commercials for AT&T saying that if you choose them as a service you get over 100,000 apps. No, AT&T, it is only if you choose the Iphone that you get those apps.

StevenGlansburg

well At&t definitely is full of shit with respect to their “best 3G experience” which is a totally subjective statement

Josh

I don’t believe it.. you said something that didn’t get downranked.

+1

bob

I have the rogers htc dream on att… time to upgrade! haha :)

jayweezy

since you can use it in USA does the app catalog work normal here? does the turn by turn work in some sort of way? is there any drawbacks from bringing it to the good ole usofa please bgr or an affilate could u answer these questions.

Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

MRCUR

Just FYI “BGR” is the blog, “BG” is the man behind the scenes…

charrion

You should have no trouble accessing the full Market with this phone on a US network. Market judges whether you can or cannot access paid apps by reading the MCC and MNC codes off your sim card. If it sees a US network, you’re fine.
In fact, one of the workarounds to get paid apps in Canada is to sim unlock your phone and get a used US sim card and just use wifi to download the apps. It’s just a pain having to swap sim cards whenever you want to access paid apps.

Winston

Seriously, you picked the iPhone display over the Milestones? What are you looking at?

Go to you tube and watch the COD MW2 preview, it is amazing on the Milestone. It is okay on the iPhone.

lRicky

I agree. I have a Droid and my friend has an Iphone. We compared the displays of both side-by-side while watching a video and playing Raging Thunder 2 whichis a game for both devices. The Droid’s display was by far much sharper and vibrant than the Iphone’s display. This is probably due to the fact that the display of the Droid is 854×480 pixels while the Iphone’s display is merely 480×320 pixels. As far as sensitivity, both devices are equal in that department. Neither device had any mistake presses. I’m still curious as to why Boygeniusreport finds the Iphone’s display better when both devices are just as sensitive and the Droid has a superior screen quality.

George

Of course the Droid has the better looking display, the Droid display is gorgeous! But double-secret non-scientific tests show that the iphone screen is 3.0 x 10^-8 nano-newton–meters^2 more sensitive and they will take any reason they can to say the iphone screen is better. :)

Student Driver

I have a Nexus One, and I’ve seen the DROID and many iPhones. The iPhone screen is NOT the better of the other two by far.

anal English major

Second paragraph, second sentence should read: seething ‘with’ instead of ‘at’ rage.

Naveen

Why can’t you get paid apps in Canada?

charrion

Because Google is dragging their heals giving us access for some silly reason. We have no problem accessing Google Checkout here so it’s not an inability to bill. Never got a straight answer from Google as to why.

Also the week they were supposed to make the big announcement has come and gone.

Tim

This is a little off subject, but I wish manufactures would make all gsm phones with all 3g bands. back in the old days of edge an unbranded quad band phone was a true world gsm phone. dont understand why they dont do that with 3g too?

SomeYoungGuy

It’s supposedly due to technical difficulties…

Nokia N900

The second “major drawback” does not matter to 99.9% of the population. Why even mention it as a major drawback?

charrion

Because to some of us it is a very major drawback. There are ways around the lack of access to paid apps on Android Market, and not just pirating. At present, there are NO ways around the locked bootloader.

IMHO, it’s a far more major drawback than the first.

Nokia N900

I will assume that English is not your first language. I said THE SECOND MAJOR DRAWBACK. The first drawback the author mentioned was the problem with getting apps the SECOND MAJOR DRAWBACK “the ease in which users can root, hack, and load custom ROMs” is what I was referring too.

joel

I will assume you have reading comprehension problems. Allow me to edit charrion’s post so even someone like you can understand what he said.

“At present, there are NO ways around the locked bootloader. IMHO, it’s a far more major drawback than the first.”

See what I did there? I removed the first two sentences in his post, since you’ve already read them and jumped to the conclusion that he misunderstood you. As surprising as it seems, sometimes it takes multiple sentences to make your point. But given your past performance when it comes to reading, I presume you haven’t made it this far, so I’m wasting my time. Oh well.

Mark

I had the Milestone for a few days running on Rogers and returned it. The call quality on the receiving end was horrible! Most people said that I sounded muffled, others said they couldn’t hear me. This is a known issue to Motorola. Good luck to those who purchase it.

HighLighter

Shut up, your broke ass couldn’t afford it.

LaToya (AKA Digital Nightmare)

Haha.

Mark

Grow up! Money is NO problem. Quality hardware is (or lack of). Just do a search for Droid poor call quality before you make stupid comments! Truth hurts? and NO I’m not an iPhone fanboy.

http://wireheadednoodlebrain.blogspot.com/ Taming

With a $5 unlock code, and an AT&T GoPhone card (my choice as a Rogers customer for a US SIM), bought on-line and shipped to Canada for about $10, Canadians can buy apps over WiFi without using phone charges.

george

The easiest way around the paid apps restriction in Canada is to put a sim card in from a country that has paid apps. I put a deactivated Cingular sim card in mine and I could see and buy paid apps. I had to set up a Google checkout account, very easy.

As for using the phone on Rogers and having poor voice quality I have not found that to be the case with mine and I make many calls per day. Either your sim card is old or you are angling the phone away from your mouth when you are speaking. I had one person complain that they couldn’t hear me and once I put the Mic closer to my mouth they said it sounded great.

Vanessa

So nice that a phone of this caliber is not limited to the slower speeds of REV A (EVDO)

Sure EVDO is fast enough, but when compared to HSPA or HSPA + it feels slow in my experience.

Since this device is capable of speeds up to 10 Mbps it puts it right there in the LTE (4G) category of speed.

I’ve used this phone for a few days. My only complaint is its heft and clunky look. The Nexus One is much much easier in the eyes but to the hardcore geeks who either don’t want or can’t have an iPhone it does everything they need it to do.

SP

This review is a little misinformed – the browsing on the Milestone is in no way “good” under 2.01 on any network. There is a major bug in 2.01 on the Milestone and any content heavy site (IGN, FutureShop.ca, etc) literally causes the browser to stall into uselessness.

I returned a Telus Milestone (unlocked) after a week for this reason – the browsing is a sad, sad joke compared to even the HTC Dream.

Once 2.1 comes out (Q2 2010) this will be moot, but for now, I can’t recommend the Milestone to anyone.

Tim

Thanks for all your help. I was unaware that the telus milestone was a true google phone. Im used to It&t having there fingerprints on everything.

David

Typical biased interview from the iPhone fanboys at BGR

http://palfrei.blogspot.com palfrei

I have it and I love it.

I’m not the kind of person that “loves” things. I just wish the slider mecanism had a spring design and the camera, headphone jack and USB port had a cover.

non-touch menu keys would have been welcome too.

Tim

The problem is Android isn’t ’emotion’. It is:

a) Java. Java is really not a good programming language. C, C++ or C# would have been better choices.
b) The API. It sucks. Overly complicated – even displaying the options menu involves setting up multiple callbacks. Something as simple (ha!) as setting the width of a layout involves creating new objects, several function calls etc.
c) MAINLY: The API documentation. It is absolutely DIRE. It really is. It’s not even on the same scale as Qt or MSDN. I’m going to give you an example:

public boolean shouldDisableDependents()
Checks whether this preference’s dependents should currently be disabled.
Returns true if the dependents should be disabled, otherwise false.

WTF? That hasn’t told me anything!

Also the ‘Spinner’ widget is actually a drop-down style menu, and the *actual* spinner widget is still marked ‘internal’; i.e. only Google are allowed to use it.

Andre

Left out alot of details but…

a) Pretty sweeping statement. In terms of features, Java is a very good language. However, you are punished for those features at runtime for execution speed thanks to the JVM needing to interpret bytecode. C# also suffers this although it appears faster because before execution, .NET’s equivalent bytecode gets compiled prior to execution to machine code.

c) See b, again, much better than Blackberry. I think your comparison to Qt or MSDN is a bit unfair since those projects have been around for a VERY long time and see far more widespread use.

Tim

The above statement was from a different Tim. not me , the one who made the first post. just so ya know

Daniel

I have this phone on AT&T at them moment.. Best phone AT&T has never sold.. lol.. Works wicked fast and gets HSPA coverage everywhere for me. The app store is fine in the usa.. when you unlock it and set it up on at&t the app store works just like it would on a nexus one or droid, paid apps and all.

Mrwirez

If you want a bad-ass phone, don’t buy the milestone. It has a digital signature on the kernel, thus preventing full root access, unlike the DROID. I suppose there are some hacks out there..?? Moto screwed up the Milestone royally. The whole idea of Android is openness.

I would say buy a Droid, but I doubt it works in Canada.(?)

charrion

It would work for the time being on Telus and Bell’s CDMA networks but not on Rogers. Bell and Rogers EV-DO only does 1X though as far as I recall. You definitely won’t get the HSPA speeds.

Thomas

Telus and Bell won’t activate CDMA phones from other carriers, or from eachother. Much like Verizon/Sprint won’t activate phones from eachother or Telus/Bell

StevenGlansburg

Yeah, the Droid won’t work anywhere outside of the US because CDMA is an archaic technology that the rest of the world has evolved from.

fan_of_fanboys

Most of the world. But to say won’t work out of US is wrong. 40+ countries it will work in.